Food Industry slow to impact on the Knowledge Economy

A major Open Day for the food industry is taking place at the Teagasc Moorepark Food Research Centre in Fermoy, today, 9 June. The Open Day celebrates 20 years of research at Moorepark with exhibitions on research in functional foods, food ingredients, dairy foods and food quality. The interaction with industry for which the Centre has achieved a strong international reputation is also being highlighted.

Details of a new Teagasc Programme of Technology Support for small and medium sized food enterprises are being presented at the food open day. This new support programme for food SMEs will operate in partnership between Enterprise Ireland and Teagasc’s Moorepark and Ashtown Food Research Centres.

Speaking at the Open Day, Professor Liam Donnelly, Teagasc’s Director of Food Research and Head of Moorepark Food Research Centre said that: “The knowledge economy will pass Ireland’s food industry by, unless it raises the level of its ambitions in technological innovation and increases its R&D capability. The industry continues to lag behind in product development and in R&D expenditure and is not achieving its potential as a major driver of economic development. Over the past two decades there has been little domestic improvement in the degree of product sophistication by our two largest food sectors, meat and dairy, which continue to manufacture predominantly commodity products. This relatively static position at home contrasts with the undoubted success of some companies in establishing manufacturing operations abroad.”

Prof. Donnelly continued: ”The sluggish innovation performance of our domestic food sector must be seen in the light of Ireland’s emphasis on the knowledge economy as a key target of future economic development. A critical success factor for companies that will drive the knowledge economy is that they have the R& D capability to achieve international leadership in inventiveness through specialised teams of scientists, technologists and engineers and to take a longer term view of returns on R&D investment. The successful development of a more knowledge intense industrial sector is a sine qua non of Ireland’s future economic prosperity, and this must involve domestic industry as much as foreign owned multinationals. It is not an unreasonable expectation that the food industry, being our largest indigenous industrial sector, should play a significant part in achieving that national aim.”

“The dilemma for the food sector is how it can meet that challenge from a base of relatively modest innovation capacity. The role of foreign multinational food companies could be highly significant in this connection. Foreign Direct Investment, particularly in knowledge intense industry, is an integral part of economic development strategy and can apply to food multinationals just as those in ICT and Pharma. Public food research institutions can be the first point of attraction of foreign multinationals if they are recognised as international leaders in research areas of high relevance for business opportunity, “said Prof Donnelly.

“One of the areas of greatest opportunity for knowledge-intense development is food ingredients, particularly nutritional ingredients and bioactives for the increasingly expanding food for health sector. In this area the scientific demands are greatest and an open innovation agenda is being pursued by the large branded food multinationals. Ireland can be an international leader in the development and manufacture of food for health ingredients where there is a very strong scientific capability in the research institutions, and building on the successes of Irish dairy companies in food ingredients manufacture,” Prof. Donnelly concluded.

This international dimension has been a key driver of the evolution of Teagasc’s Moorepark Food Research Centre in recent years. The Centre has been building its scientific strengths over the years in areas of maximum innovation potential for food companies and is now recognised internationally as one of the foremost applied research centres in its areas of specialisation. Connected to this MFRC has greatly expanded its research associations with leading multinational food companies, and the Centre is now seen as a prime agent in the attraction of these companies into R&D activities in Ireland.